That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,

Winner and loser?

Laertes. None but his enemies.

King.

Will you know them, then?

Laertes. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms; And like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,"

Repast them with my blood.

Why, now you speak

King.
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.

Danes.

[Within] Let her come in.

Laertes. How now! what noise is that ? ·

Reënter OPHELIA.

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye !-
By Heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May !
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia !
O heavens is't possible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

1 Sweepstake; a gambling term, meaning "to gather in all the stakes." 2 This has reference to the old fable, that the pelican pierces her own breast to give sustenance to her young. Dr. Sherwen, as cited by Caldecott in a note quoted by Furness, thus accounts for the origin of the fable: "By the pelican's dropping upon her breast her lower bill to enable her young to take food from its capacious pouch, lined with fine flesh-colored skin, this appearance is, on feeding them, given."

3 Sample.

Ophelia. [Sings] They bore him barefac'd on the bier :
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;

Fare you well, my

And in his grave rain'd many a tear.

dove!

Laertes. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

Ophelia. [Sings] You must sing a-down a-down,

An you call him a-down-a.

O, how the wheel1 becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter.

Laertes. This nothing's more than matter.2

Ophelia. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.

Laertes. A document3 in madness; thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Ophelia. There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays: O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died. They say he made a good end- [Sings.

For bonnie sweet Robin is all my joy.

Laertes. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness.

Ophelia. [Sings] And will he not come again?

1 Chorus, or burden.

2 Meaning.

And will he not come again?

No, no, he is dead:

Go to thy deathbed,

He never will come again.

3 A teaching; a lesson.

4 "There's fennel," etc. Fennel is emblematic of flattery, columbine of ingratitude, and rue of sorrow. The violet is for faithfulness, and the daisy signifies dissimulation.

God be wi' ye. [Exit.

And of all Christian souls, I pray God.
Laertes. Do you see this, O God?
King. Laertes, I must com'mune 3 with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

3

Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand

They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,

Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul
To give it due content.

Laertes.

Let this be so:

His means of death, his ob'scure funeral,

No trophy, sword, nor hatchment 5 o'er his bones,

No noble rite nor formal ostentation,

Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call❜t in question.

King.

So you shall;

And where the offense is let the great ax fall.

I pray you, go with me.

1 Head.

2" We cast away moan," i.e., waste our mourning.

3 Make common cause.

4 Implicated (in the murder of your father).

[Exeunt.

5 "No trophy," etc.: "Not only the sword, but the helmet, gantlet, spurs, and tabard (i.e., a coat whereon the armorial bearings were anciently depicted, from whence the term coat of armor') are hung over the grave of every knight."-SIR J. HAWKINS.

SCENE VI. Another Room in the Castle.

Enter HORATIO and a Servant.

Horatio. What are they that would speak with me ?

Servant. Sailors, sir. They say they have letters for you.
Horatio. Let them come in.

I do not know from what part of the world

I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

First Sailor. God bless you, sir.

Horatio. Let him bless thee too.

[Exit Servant.

First Sailor. He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you, sir,— it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England,—if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know 1 it is.

Horatio. [Reads] "Horatio, when thou shalt have overlook'd this, give these fellows some means to the King: they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment3 gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valor, and in the grapple I boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. 6 good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee Farewell.

These

"He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET."

1 "Let to know," i.e., informed.

2 Means of access.

3 Equipment.

5"On the instant," i.e., at the moment.

4 Enforced.

6 "For the bore of the matter:" "The bore is the caliber of a gun, or the capacity of the barrel. 'The matter,' says Hamlet,' would carry heavier 'words.'"-JOHNSON.

Come, I will make you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.

SCENE VII. Another Room in the Castle.

Enter KING and LAERtes.

[Exeunt

King. Now must your conscience my acquitance seal,

And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursu'd my life.

Laertes.

It well appears; but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful1 and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirr'd up.

King.

O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,2

But yet to me they are strong. The Queen, his mother,
Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,-

My virtue or my plague, be it either which, —
She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,3

That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,

I could not but by her.

The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go,

Is the great love the general gender 4 bear him;
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces;5 so that my arrows,

1 Heinous.

2 "Much unsinew'd," i.e., of little force. 3 ́ So conjunctive to my life and soul,” i.e., so much a part of me. 4 "The general gender,” i.e., the masses; the common people. 5 "Convert his gyves to graces," i.e., were I to put him in bonds, the fetters would only give him a more general favor.”. MOBERLY.